The Fall Read Online Free PDF

threaded his fingers through hers. ‘Ana,’ he said. ‘You’ve been living as Jasper’s wife for the last three weeks. You’re another man’s wife.’
    So that was why he kept drawing away.
    ‘Nothing happened between me and Jasper. All the time I was at the Taurells’, I was figuring out how I was going to leave and find you.’
    His eyes grew transparent, like water filled with light. ‘I know you felt trapped in the Community. I don’t want you to feel the same way here.’
    ‘What do you mean? I thought we were leaving. Are we like prisoners?’
    ‘No.’ He smiled, scuffing his feet. For the first time ever he looked almost awkward around her. ‘No, I just don’t want you to think that to be here, you have to . . .’
    ‘Have to what?’
    He swallowed hard. ‘Have to be with me.’
    Her bottom lip began to wobble. ‘You’re the reason I came.’ She stepped closer and fiddled with the top of his black T-shirt. ‘I’m here because of you.’
    ‘I just need you to know that my help is unconditional.’
    ‘Unconditional,’ she nodded. Suddenly his lips were on hers, warm and electrifying. The confused mess in her head slipped into the background, her senses took over and the sensation of his hands on her back, the softness of his mouth, were all that mattered.
    *
    Jasper entered the music room, a small annex off the library, and stood there for a moment. The house was silent; the piano stool empty. He crossed to the latticed window and opened it. Leaning out he could see the pool and the tennis courts. It was almost six o’clock. Where was everyone? Where was Ana?
    He found his mother in the kitchen, pouring wine into the beef stroganoff. Her eyes were glazed and she was walking on a tilt. Hard grey surfaces, glass cupboards and dark flagstones made up the large kitchen. Two wicker chairs and a table full of old magazines – his mother’s prized collection – sat by the back door.
    ‘Jasper, honey!’ she shrieked. He grimaced at the volume. He didn’t remember his mother like this – loud, fake, sloshed half the time. In the jumbled memories of his childhood she was always painting, helping him with art projects, standing back and admiring her children in a way that made him straighten with pride. He wondered if she’d been like this since Tom’s death.
    It’s got worse , a part of him whispered. The part that seemed to know more than the rest of him; the scrap that had survived his brain-washing abduction by a religious sect, or as Ana would have him believe, a political kidnapping linked to his brother’s accident three years ago. His own memories concerning the abduction were too vague to be useful: a giant hangar; being strapped down; a stream of voices running on and on in the darkness. It was as though his whole past, up until he’d been found wandering the City amnesic and half-starved, had been shaken up and the years before he joined with Ana, coming to him in strange, incomprehensible flashes.
    ‘Where’s Ana?’ he asked.
    ‘She went for a swim.’ His mother counted out half a dozen potatoes from a large brown sack.
    ‘But the pool’s broken.’
    ‘At the neighbours’.’
    Wasn’t that hours ago, before her father left? ‘Odd,’ he said.
    ‘People in the Community aren’t as intolerant as you think. They know what the two of you have been through. Everything’s going to work out. Ana is such a wonderful pianist.’
    ‘Well that’s a recipe for success.’
    ‘You were smitten by her, Jasper.’ A note of sincerity entered his mother’s voice, making him pay attention. ‘Your father wasn’t happy about you two becoming joined after we found out there’d been an error with her test. You persuaded him. I—’ she broke off.
    ‘Are you crying, Mum?’
    She lifted the sack of potatoes with a big sigh.
    ‘Let me.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said, struggling towards the pantry. After disappearing for a minute, she swung back into the kitchen more buoyant than